"Stay!" she said again, after our mute gaze, and laying her hand upon my
arm. "You shall not love me in vain, you shall not trust me for nothing.
Your cause is mine to-day. That is the last message I send to Vienna."
And then I believed her.
The light, slanting up, crept in and touched the brow of an ideal bust
of Mithras which she had invested with her faintly-faded wreath of
heliotropes; their fragrance falling through the place already made the
atmosphere more rich than that of chest of almond-wood,--this perfume
that is like the soul of the earth itself exhaled to the amorous air.
Behind an alabaster shrine she lighted a holy-taper, slowly to waste
and pale in the spreading day. We went to the window, where among the
ivy-nooks day's life was just astir with gaudy wings.
"All will be seeking you, and yet you cannot go," she said.
"Why can I not go?"
"It is broad morning."
"And what of that?"
"One thing. You shall not compromise yourself, going from the house of
an Austrian woman and worse!"
She was too winningly imperious to fail. I delayed, and together we
looked out on the rosy sky.
"Come down," she said at last, "and on an arbor-moss the sun shall
drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your lullaby,
and I your guard.
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